Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.
29/12/68 : The Sound Of Music OST - Various Artists
Well - the good news is we're not starting the year with a Take That album, at least...
I've generally avoided soundtrack albums in the past, but those consisting of original songs definitely stand a better chance of getting a listen. Also, looking further down the chart on what is only our first week of a new year, I'm going to have to be less harsh in my rejection of albums or else I'm gonna run out of albums - for starters, we only have 40 albums in the chart and there seem to be an awful lot of soundtracks, best ofs and live albums in there. There are also plenty of reasons to include this album - more on this later...
I've never listened to this album but, funnily enough, I was pretty aware of most of it. There are some tracks I don't know, but most of it is, as Radio 1 DJs would say, "wall to wall bangers". At one point we get a run of "Sixteen Going On Seventeen", "My Favorite Things", "Do-Re-Mi", "The Sound Of Music" and "The Lonely Goatherd" - what more could you ask for? Yes, the music sounds a bit flat compared with more modern recordings, but you really can't fault the songs. Would I ever listen to it again? Not a chance - but I'm pretty sure we're going to experience far worse albums later on this year.
We're are #4 in the charts this week on its - wait for it - 196th week of a - wait for it - 304 week run. Lordy. Of those 196 weeks, it spent 70 weeks at #1 (including an 18 week run), 66 weeks at #2, it had an 104 week run in the top two places, an 154 week run in the top five and it only spent four of those weeks out of the top ten! That's some impressive numbers - and it's managed another 70 weeks in the charts over the years, with it last being seen in 1982. So it's fair to say I'll be mentioning it quite a bit this year, so I think I'll just refer to it as TSOM. The rest of the top five this week were The Beatles (not one of my favourites of theirs), The Seekers best-of (I'm not going to stoop to best-ofs yet), The Rolling Stones (probably my favourite of theirs) and Simon & Garfunkel with no new entry being shown in the entire chart - I suspect this is either because they didn't have a chart in Xmas week or the data has been lost.
So, given it's been so fantastically popular, Wikipedia must have loads on the album, right? Well no, it's got surprisingly little - for starters, it doesn't even mention Julie Andrews or Christopher Plummer! The only thing I learned apart from various things around its phenomenal success is that the film soundtrack doesn't include three songs from the original stage version and there are two new ones, with these being written by Rodgers alone because Hammerstein had died in the intervening period. A bit more on its success, it was the best selling album in the UK in '65, '66 and '68 - it was only #2 in '67 (and #6 in '69). And it was either the #1 or #2 in the best selling albums of the decade - Wikipedia seems unsure of itself on this matter,
"Customers also listened to" the OSTs of Oklahoma!, Annie, The Wizard Of Oz and Oliver! - amongst countless others. If you like musicals, you tend to like musicals - but I think the film of this lifted it above being a mere "musical" (it was the highest ever grossing film for five years). Having said that, it's not a film I particularly love (it's far too long) and I can't say I love any of the songs, but they are enjoyably cheesy and I didn't mind listening to it (but won't be rushing back to it).
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